


An Everywhere of Silver

by wendelah1



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Post-Series, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-29
Updated: 2009-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Mulder and Scully had separated at some point during their time as fugitives? What if there was a good reason?</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Everywhere of Silver

Outside in the bitter cold, the snow began to fall, coating the trees and ground with the soft flakes of a mid-winter storm. Mulder stood for a moment at the window, watching it swirl and drift. He had grown up in New England, where the changes in the seasons were merely what one expected. Then, he had looked forward to the first snow. Now, the near constant snowfall only made his isolation feel more acute. He needed to get more wood inside before the storm got any worse.

Putting off the chore wouldn't make it any easier, he told himself. He walked to the kitchen to put the kettle on for instant coffee and then sat down on the small bench inside the mudroom to put his boots on. He stood up, pulled on his heavy parka and the sturdy leather gloves she had given him for Christmas two years ago.

He stacked the cord log by log into a neat pile near the hearth of the large brick fireplace, then added another log of the dry, seasoned Douglas fir into the flames. He waited, watching the flames as they reached the fresh fuel, seeing it catch and heat and burn.

That task accomplished, he turned on his computer. It was a daily ritual, one he stubbornly refused to stop, although the end result was never what he wanted.

Perusing the mailbox subject lines, inwardly cursing, deleting the spam, he was startled to see the username he was hoping for pop up near the bottom. He skipped quickly over the remainder and clicked on backinblackgirl23.

He had hoped for a letter; what he got instead was a short, cryptic message.

"Meet me in town. Jack's place at 2 PM tomorrow. I will explain when you get there."

He stared at the screen, not sure if he should be happy to have the months' long silence broken or pissed at the utter lack of emotion in the simple message. It had been nearly a year since they had spoken in person; he wouldn't have thought a simple "I miss you" too much to expect. He didn't expect the "L" word. They didn't do emotion well, even at their best. He printed the email, and then deleted it.

After all that had happened, he needed to know why she had finally elected to contact him again. She was the one who insisted on the distance, the extra precautions. She just wanted to keep him safe, was what she had said. Sometimes he wondered if that was the truth, or if she just needed to get away from the untidy mental clutter of his ongoing fascination with the paranormal.

He made himself stop pacing and started pounding out a series of queries to the contacts he still had. Then he stepped away from the computer, sat down in front of the fireplace, and stared into the flames. In spite of his color-blindness, he knew that the color of his former partner's red hair was similar to that of the fire that burned in front of him. She had changed it, dyed it a chestnut brown, during the time they were fugitives together. He wondered if she had finally changed it back. He hoped so.

It was only ten o'clock in the morning. He had more than twenty-four hours before he could set out for town. He decided to spend the time productively. Mulder's housekeeping had become a bit haphazard since she had left, so he decided to put the house back to rights.

He swept and then mopped the wooden floor, ran the sweeper over the old Persian carpet, put the books back into the bookshelves, and gathered up the laundry that lay strewn around the bedroom. He found himself getting distracted by the Fall 2005 issue of _The Journal of Parapsychology_ he had found under the bed. "Paranormal Belief and Religiosity" was the title of the article. He remembered discussing the findings with her, her amusement at the topic, his defensiveness, and his irritability at how dismissive she could still be. God. He missed her so much.

He took the issue, dusted it off and, after hesitating, put it in the stack on top of Scully's old medical journals.

Too keyed up to fall asleep, he finally succumbed to the droning tones of Joseph Campbell's _The Power of Myth_. Television reception could be erratic, so he had broken down and purchased a new Sony HDTV and a PlayStation 3 for company.

He woke up before the alarm went off, showered, dressed, drank a cup of coffee, and spread peanut butter and jelly on two frozen toaster waffles. It had stopped snowing yesterday but he wondered if the snowplows had made it back this far. It was chancy, so he decided to walk down to the highway before he got the snow shovel out to clear the driveway.

The air was clear, and briskly cold. The highway that ran alongside the front of Mulder's property was still snowed in, but he could hear the faint hum of the snowplows. They were already close. He needed to get the driveway clear.

Finally by noon, he had eased the Suburu wagon out of the garage and headed down the highway. By successfully distracting himself with hard physical work, he had allowed himself little time to mull over what Scully's reason for wanting to see him could be. He knew it was too much to hope it might be personal. But none of his old contacts could report any changes in her professional or her personal life.

By the time he opened the wide, heavy door that led into the tavern, Mulder was fairly crackling with nervous energy. He nodded to the bartender Mike, who was standing behind the bar, wiping down the glassware and putting it away. He glanced around the dimly lit room, scanning for her familiar face and form. She wasn't there, and it wasn't like Scully to be late. That meant one of two things: either she had changed her mind and wasn't coming at all or something had happened to prevent her from being there. He wasn't happy either way.

He was ready to head back, but he thought better of it and went over to the bar, intending to ask Mike if he had seen her. Instead, he found himself sitting next to someone he never expected to see alive again, let alone sitting on a stool at Jack's Tavern.

"Diana. It's been a long time." Mulder felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him, but he carefully kept the shock out of his greeting. He needed to find out how she knew what she knew.

"Yes. It has, Fox. Why don't we get a table so we can talk?"

Her smile was the same, her voice, the same. What was different? Mulder took her arm, helped her off the stool, and steered her toward the back of the bar. He waited while she slid into the booth, and then sat down next to her.

"What happened to Scully? What have you done to her?" he said in a low tone, watching the entrance out of the corner of his eye. She couldn't have come on her own. She was too smart an agent to have come after him without backup.

"It's not what you think, Fox. Dana is fine. You're the one who is in danger. That's why I've come." He remembered her looking at him before just like this: serious, sincere, in appearance, if not in fact.

"I'm listening." He kept studying her face, her clothing. What was he missing?

"You are going to be contacted by Dana. The FBI is going to try to use her to get to you. They want your help in finding a missing FBI agent," she said quietly.

"How do you know this?" Was it her hair, that she had let go into what he presumed was its natural color, streaked through now with silver threads? He wasn't sure what her natural color was, as she had started dyeing even before he knew her, claiming premature gray ran in her family.

"You know I can't tell you that," she said firmly. "I would if I could. You have to trust me on this. They don't know I'm here. Just being here is taking a huge risk."

"Then why are you here?" he said bluntly. He looked at her again. Then it came to him, she didn't just look older and grayer, she looked-- she looked like Scully had looked when she was sick. Was this visit just some kind of attempt at deathbed atonement for past sins, or had Diana made a deal with the devil?

Diana caught him staring at her. She smiled sadly, began gathering her belongings. She motioned for him to get up and let her out of the booth.

"I need to go. I have to get back before I am missed."

Mulder caught her arm. "Wait. Don't go just yet. This weather is tough to drive in, even if you're used to snow. Why don't you come home with me? The weather is supposed to hold through tomorrow afternoon. Stay with me. I'll follow you back to the highway in the morning."

At her reluctance, he added, "You took a big risk and traveled a long distance, Diana, to tell me practically nothing. I need to talk to you about this case you think I'm going to be asked to solve. Why would the Bureau come to me now after all of this time? And who wants to kill me? Haven't I been effectively neutralized? I have no access, not even to Scully. They know that, obviously, and they know where I am, if you're here."

She looked down at her hands, with some embarrassment, he noted. Then she pulled her coat in closer. "Fine. Let's go. I hope you have better heat than this place does. I can't ever seem to get warm now." She laughed a little. "I can't believe I'm saying this but I never thought I'd miss hot flashes."

She was wearing a goose down parka, in a room that had to be at least 70 degrees, yet was shivering. Now that he had figured it out, her appearance was even more alarming. Her color pale, the contours of her face had changed from the weight loss, even her hands looked thin. Maybe she hadn't really risked that much. Maybe she hadn't anything left to lose.

"I remember Scully was always cold too, when she was sick," he found himself saying, to her obvious discomfort.

"It's that obvious." She seemed to shrink down into her bulky outerwear at his assent. "It's not what you think, but I don't want to talk about it here."

 

* * *

 

Mulder settled Diana on the sofa, in front of the fire, wrapped in the soft quilt he and Scully had found at a garage sale back in North Carolina. He handed her a cup of tea, in a proper china cup, also courtesy of Scully's love of pretty things. After adding another log to the fire, he seated himself on the armchair next to her, then turned to face Diana.

"So, Diana. Why don't you tell me why you really came here, and who sent you?" Mulder's voice was casual but there was anger beneath it, and she would recognize that. She knew him. She had once known him very well, even loved him, or so he had thought at the time.

"I came to warn you, just like I told you back in town. I am deep underground now myself, but I still have some contacts, the same as you do. This is pretty, Fox. Was it your mother's?" She spoke softly, balancing the cup and saucer in her lap.

Mulder bit back his response. "Not as good as yours, apparently, since you knew right where to find me, and found someone to hack into Scully's computer to get our old email address and hers as well. I didn't even know you were still alive."

Diana smiled bitterly. "You weren't meant to know. And I won't be for much longer. I have metastatic breast cancer, Fox. I am going to die from it just like millions of other women have. No connection to the consortium, no government conspiracy, just like..."

"Stop it." Mulder's voice was cold.

"...William," she continued, as though she hadn't even heard him. "There was nothing more that either of you could have done. Her bone marrow wasn't compatible, the adoptive parents obviously couldn't donate."

She sounded so calm and so reasonable. Easy enough when it wasn't your kid.

"I could have been there! For him, for Scully. It isn't as though I've been accomplishing anything here, I'm just marking time. Why shouldn't I take the chance?" Maybe she just didn't want to hear him. Why the fuck were they talking about this?

"Because you aren't meant to survive the case. You're wrong. They don't know where you are, so they are going to use this case to draw you in, and kill you. They will tell you all is forgiven. The case will have paranormal undertones, which will be used as an excuse to bring you back. Something will go wrong. You will die in the line of duty, and get a hero's burial. Scully will be allowed to continue being a doctor. There will be no one left to sound the alarm that the end is near." Her eyes were dark and huge in her thin, pale face. She looked frightened and exhausted.

"You are talking about colonization," he said quietly.

"It's only four years away, Fox. Someone has to try to stop it. There are some sleeper cells operating, I can put you in contact with them. You can't stay here. It's too dangerous." She pleaded.

He stood up, pushing the chair back hard as he did. Diana looked startled.

"I am not going to throw in now with those butchers, those bastards who took my sister, who experimented on Scully. I'll take my chances out in the open. Now tell me what you know about the case." His voice was hard.

"The name of the ASAC who is going to bring you into the case is Whitney, Dakota Whitney," she said, in resignation. "She has been reading your old case files, making discreet inquiries. She knows where Dana is. An agent will be going to see her tomorrow, so I imagine she will be arriving here tomorrow afternoon."

"What makes you so certain Scully will contact me?" The dark circles under Diana's eyes stood out so clearly against her pale skin.

"She will be told that there is an FBI agent in danger. A young woman, kidnapped from her home. She was once in that young woman's shoes. We both know she won't turn them down. You won't turn them down either."

"Then I guess I had better be careful," he said lightly.

"Mulder. After William died, why didn't she come back? I know she loved you, I think she still she does."

Diana looked as though she actually gave a damn, which was surprising. Mulder decided that there was no point in not telling her the truth.

"I think losing him for the second time, seeing him suffer, it changed something for her. She told me that she had made up her mind to go be a doctor, do the new residency, so that she could try to help other children, I think to make up for what she saw as her failure with William." And Emily. "I had to let her go." His voice faded a little. He had had to let them both go.

"For a while we tried to make the long-distance thing work, but doing a residency in your forties is not easy. She was working long hours, with very little rest. It was risky to come see me; obviously, I couldn't go see her. We had to assume her phone was being tapped, her mail watched, for any signs of contact with me. So if you tell me there is a way I can go back without risking her career, even if it does mean risking my neck in the process, I have to take that chance. You knew that I would, so I have to ask you again, why are you here?"

He tried to keep the anger out of his voice but he was running out of patience for this game.

She was silent for a moment. "Maybe I just wanted to see you again, Fox. Maybe I wanted to try to get some closure, to explain to you what happened. Why I made the choices that I did. I see now that this was a mistake."

She kicked off her shoes, pulled the quilt around her and lay down on the sofa. "I'm very tired. I need to sleep. After tomorrow, I won't bother you again. Would you mind bringing me another blanket, Fox? I'm still cold," she said faintly.

For the sake of their shared history, and in light of her current suffering, Mulder again bit back his response. He walked silently into his bedroom and pulled a thick, goose down comforter out of the back of the closet, placing it carefully over her. He then turned out the lights in the front room, leaving a small night light burning in the hallway. He did not say goodnight.

He lay under the covers of the bed he had made for them, when they had first settled here, and tried to fall asleep.

He kept mulling over the information Diana had given him, what little there was. He couldn't deny being worried now, but that couldn't be allowed to matter. He was being given a second chance, and he wasn't going to let her down this time. This time, she would come first, not the case, not the truth, and not the fucking FBI.

For the first time in a long while, Mulder allowed himself to think about his son. He had barely gotten to hold William, before he was forced to leave him, to leave them both. That was a dark time, but at least then, there had been the hope of an eventual reunion to keep him going. Plus, the truth was out there, its siren call always leading him forward.

After Skinner had told them about William's illness, he was the one who urged Scully to contact the adoptive parents, and have them both tested as possible donors for their son. Sadly, neither were a match.

William's death had been mercifully swift; after the first and second rounds of chemotherapy had failed, the Van de Kamps had chosen hospice care for their son, over the experimental treatments that might or might not have cured his illness. He knew that Scully had disagreed, and had pleaded with them to allow her to try to find a cure. Although they had refused her, they had allowed her access to the child. Sometimes, he admitted, he wished they hadn't.

He thought about what Scully had said to him, after the death of her daughter. Who would create a life, just to see her suffer? He had no answers for her, then or now.

Mulder didn't fear his own death. What he feared most now, was causing her more pain, through dying. She had lost so much already because of him.

It was such a painful notion that he considered heeding Diana's warning after all. But to do so would mean he would have to say no to Scully to her face, or leave immediately, to avoid seeing her at all. And that, he knew, he could never do. He had to see her again; if she came, he would risk it all, for this chance to be with her once more.

He got up, and walked quietly into the front room to check the fireplace. The room held heat well, but without the fire, the cold would be more than he suspected Diana could tolerate. Breast cancer. Of all of the things he thought might have happened to Diana, dying of cancer wasn't even on the list. How sad, yet how ordinary.

He willed himself to forget about their past, and start to forgive her. Holding on to his anger wasn't going to change what had happened between them. According to Scully, she had saved his life once before. She had tried to do the right thing now. Let it be, let it be.

He would make her pancakes in the morning, with real maple syrup. Diana liked pancakes, he remembered, and so did he.

The winter night was cold and dark, lit only by the stars and a waning sliver of moon. Fox Mulder finally slept. He did not dream.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a poem by Emily Dickinson. The story was written in response to the challenge at the Live Journal community, haremxf: The Truth and Its Consequences, The Other Women After the End. It was started long before I saw the movie, and turned thereafter from speculation fic into AU. Scully's quilt and teacup are my little tribute to my favorite writer, Laurie Colwin, who died October 23, 1992, at the age of forty-eight, of sudden, unexpected heart failure. She always had her characters drink their tea from real china teacups, and wrapped them up in warm, homemade quilts.
> 
> Hugs and Kisses to idunnoh for beta, and for his love and support.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Things We Thought That We Should Do](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23782) by [wendelah1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1)




End file.
